15 Movies to Watch on Netflix Before They're Gone in May

From Airplane! to Skyfall, everything to watch before it expires at the end of the month.

There's so much A-list stuff to watch on Netflix these days—including Daredevil, Marvel's maiden binge-watchable series for the streaming giant—that it's easy to forget about many of the beloved films that are set to expire at the end of each month. That situation is easily rectified, however, by our handy rundown of those superlative offerings that, for contractual reasons, are about to depart the streaming service. From comedy to drama, off-kilter indies to gonzo foreign imports, Netflix's crop of movies expiring at the end of April is a strong one, so add these to your list, and get to watching.

Airplane! (1980)and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

Surely you know that 1980's original Airplane! is not only vastly superior to its 1982 sequel, but in fact helped kick-start the entire Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker spoof-comedy revolution. With Robert Stack, Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar along for the ride, it's one of the all-time great modern comedies. The sequel, uneven as it is, ain't half-bad either.

A Knight's Tale (2001)

Heath Ledger's breakout role was in this 2001 comedic adventure, about a 14th-century peasant who pretends to be a knight in a jousting contest and rises through the ranks of medieval high society. As one of his accomplices, Paul Bettany (in his breakthrough role) is a charming riot.

Along Came Polly (2004)

Critically dismissed at the time of its original release, Along Came Polly is a surprisingly sturdy romantic comedy, less because of its leads—Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston share little in the way of chemistry—than because of the ribald rapport between Stiller and his best friend, played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman.

BASEketball (1998)

No, it's not as funny as South Park or Team America: World Police. But Trey Parker and Matt Stone's '90s film—directed by Airplane!'s David Zucker—is still a reasonably and profanely funny sports comedy, about a pair of doofuses who find success by inventing a new baseball-basketball hybrid game.

Cecil B. Demented (2000)

One of John Waters' late triumphs, Cecil B. Demented delivers scathing movie-industry satire via the Patty Hearst-inspired story of Stephen Dorff's gonzo terrorist filmmaker, who kidnaps a Hollywood starlet (Melanie Griffith) and convinces her to become part of his underground-cinema gang.

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

An old-school sci-fi classic, Richard Fleischer's 1966 adventure involves a team of scientists who, in order to save a man who's been mortally wounded in an assassination attempt, shrink themselves to microscopic size and enter his body to repair his wounds.

Ichi the Killer (2001)

Japan's Takeshi Miike is one of cinema's most out-there auteurs, a madman who warps and twists genres to his own demented ends, and one of his most popular—and controversial—works is this ultra-violent crime thriller (based on a popular manga series), about an organized-crime killer enmeshed in a war between rival yakuza outfits.

Robocop (1987)

Forget last year's underwhelming remake, and stick with Paul Verhoeven's original sci-fi masterpiece, which delivers both the brutal action goods and stinging social satire through the story of a wounded cop who's transformed by a shady military-industrial conglomerate into a cyborg police officer.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Robert Zemeckis' first box-office hit was this '80s action-romance-comedy, in which Kathleen Turner's romance novelist finds herself searching for treasure in South America alongside Michael Douglas' exotic bird smuggler—a rollicking story just like one of her character's own novels.

The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

Even more popular than its predecessor, albeit devoid of Zemeckis' directorial flair, this sequel to Romancing the Stone reunites Douglas, Turner, and Danny DeVito in another Indiana Jones-ish adventure, this time in the African desert.

The Secret of NIMH (1982)

Animation legend Don Bluth's directorial debut is this children's classic about a mother rat on a quest to save her ill son with the help of genetically altered compatriots, which boasted then-revolutionary animation techniques that give the film its striking aesthetic detail and expressiveness.

Valkyrie (2008)

Bryan Singer's historical action-drama may lose a measure of suspense due to the nature of its based-on-real-events story—about a plot by German soldiers to assassinate Hitler—but it nonetheless remains a tightly plotted thriller with a commanding lead performance by Tom Cruise.

Flight (2012)

Its finale may play like complete nonsense, yet up until that climactic misstep, Robert Zemeckis' drama about an alcoholic pilot who miraculously averts mid-air disaster—thereby saving his craft and its passengers—is headlined by a compelling lead performance by Denzel Washington as a man wracked by addiction.

Skyfall (2012)

James Bond gets a distinctly Batman-esque backstory in this Sam Mendes-directed installment in the 007 franchise, which has Daniel Craig's rugged secret agent battling Javier Bardem's villain while also plumbing the deep, dark secrets of his past.

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